I like these forums. Chris morris is spot on (it seems). Derren brown I first learned about his 2nd book here (after devouring his first and listenign ot audio book, practically rereading) and nlp is pretty snazzy helpful at times.

Thus, I was doing this cathartic, self-journaling, autobio post to myself and realized it might useful to plug in some nlp techinques here (NOTE: if this is inappropriate for this forum I understand) just realized some NLP techniques could help achieve some goals possibly. nice.


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I grew up spoiled. My parents were/are filthy (emphasis on the filthy) rich. Some might dream of how nice that would be, but trust for me, for the reasons I will propound, it is the opposite of a walk in the park. Having rich parents can be the most dismal, life-locked, frightening, ensnared, lost, confused, hellish random aspect of your life. Here's why it was all that and more to me.

I don't know where to so start, but this comes to mind as a signficant "starting point" so I'll start at 16. When I was 16 I:
1. lost my virginity (realizing sex wasn't as big of a deal AT ALL as movies made it out to be).
2. finally taught martial arts after 6 years as a student ( a significant reality-changing experience)
3. broke 5-minutes in the mile (a huge achievement at the time)
4. took a seminar that encouraged out-of-the-box thinking (kind of the spark)

that made me realize that my biological parents offered little or ZERO value or learnings to me. I for the first time in my life didn't like at my parents as Ms. and Mr. God, but as people that I had learned everything they have to teach.

I can only imagine how many great things I would've done if I had continued with all tha AWESOME 1-2-3-4 momentum. Olympics (well prob not that far, but good stuff), MAssive career success (likely) Constant health alignment great relationships (definitely). Few of those happens and I blame almost entirely (and I have blamed my self inducing Heinous amounts of guilt and shame and fear) my parents.

My parents were heinous when I first criticized their parenting. I said they were trying to raise a "perfect familY". The so harshly and verbally criticized nad mocked me because of that to do this day saying what I called I called them "perfect family" I cringe. They said I had been brainwashed by the seminar, but in reality, it was they who had brainwashed me for 16 years. I have many years of hindsight and can see this. As my godfather said, you can't brainwash someone in a few days, but you can in over a dozen years. My parents had over a dozen years. They tried to sue the leader of the seminar (who, in reality, had little to do with my realization that my parents were people whom I had outrgrown) and I "moved out"....

But as a kid who has parents that are filthy rich. "moved out" was the house next door that my parents bought (which was kind of given to them by the neighbors, but yeah). So for the remainder of highschool 16-18 and whenever I came home from college 18-22ish, I lived in this pseudo house-next-door to my parents house. It was a moratirum because I didn't earn a dime, but some elements felt like "I was living on my own' FAR FROM it.

And this is where we come full circle and I reveal why rich (especially brainwashing cult-leader parents) parents are the worst situation for a kid. I never learned how to earn. 

I was a spoiled rotten kid. Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. I still don't earn much at all. I NEVER LEARNED HOW TO EARN. THAT IS WHY having rich parents is devastatingly brutal!!!

So.... That's my opening of my parental angst, fear, stuff I need to graduate from, dilemma, etc.

And thus it was at 16 that my family became dysfunctional

At 16 my parents berated, criticized, emotionally abused me and from then on they vacillated from this manic hell of people whom I convinced myself I loved and people whom I loathed and hated and couldn't bloody stand and were like bullies.

Indeed, a lot of my success in life were because of my father's emotional bullying. Additionally, I realized I was so lost in college (yet another thing that got force-fed to me by my parents, even though I love learning, I disliked college), because my father ENJOYs/ed discombobulating, confusing, making people get what they Don't want. 

He has probably said to me close to a hundred times. We don't care what you want! Tha's classic brainwashing behavior. Telling a person that you aren't doing what you're doing. And then when my brother (who escaped the zero-earning hellish confusion that I was enslaved in for years) says he is going to be a doctor my dad always goes a Doctor??? And shakes his head (in the "no" ,negation headshake) and he always says he doesn't care what we do...pffft he obviously disapproved of that.

And that's what I grew up iwth. Deciet, lies. My mother says she has NEVER lied about anything . Do you know that stastically the probability of that is much less than 1%? 

I have told white lies and I consider myself very honest. But I know I have not, not lied.

Anyway...this is important aside from griping from the past because I am having difficulty earning. And I never learned.


Additionally, I realized I loathe one of my uncles. This is strange because for awhile I wanted to live with him and my aunt thinking they'd make these great parents but my uncle is a ******. My other uncle who has three daughters (my cousins) that swim is pretty good though.

Anyway.....

This is important NOW in life because 
1)I need to earn and my parents in the past have been direct (my father ridiculing business ideas I've had, or insulting them or trying to to convince me they wouldn't work, through college -- if you've seen Lord of the Rings, I am not The kind of the horse people or rohan, but if I were, my father would be wormtongue, poisoning confidence and spirit and clarity). But he's been so effective that to I still sometimes think I love him and I sitll do about some things, true. but I also know that he was one of the most destructive people in my life. true. bollocks. 

2) I have a LOT of anger at my parents. A lot of it is spent. screamed. fumed. at them. at journals. at exercise. but I want "healhty closure". My own dad had unhealthy closure with his parents. He talked about them to a shrink in his 20s and he has so much mommy-daddy issue stuff (which I've called him on before) that he can't even mention his parents (whom are now dead), but my extended family is very lopsided because in his endeavor to "severe his past" my dad only introduced us to his parents. I never knew anyone else other than my dad's parents form his side of biofam. (no uncles, cousins, nothing from my dads side). so my dad has unhealthy closure. He can't talk about his parnets because of bottled ****. I dknow I don't have that, but I want closure and a closure so I can be like "yeah oath this, this is the way it was, it sucked because of xyz, it was great because of xyz1" now i've evolved to abc". In short, no longer impacted by past -- not numb to it but "graduated" from the brainwashing cult hell of my parents (I've defined my father has demonic and bullying nad my mother as icy before).


3) I've noticed in the small wedged, pathetically small space of self-identity surrounded by ferocious hounds of hellish brainwahsing of my parents as I was growing up (nice image eh?!) that....there was a schism at 16. I realized I didn't need my parents (only it was only a half a dozen years later that I was able ot piece together that that's what happened. I just was total honesty then and told them EVERYTHING, the WORST thing to do to toxic people by teh way) for learning . And since that day that's been true, but I needed them for money and bloody hell I wish they didn't help me out with money back then because it just got harder and more confusing to earn later in life. anyways. this 3rd problem with folks is too complex 1)need to earn, they incapacitated earning endeavors and thwarted and never taught. 2)residual anger want to healthily relinquis hadn create healthy closure and 3) I didn't get along with my parents to SUCH A HUGE degree and they were so "engulfing, no, CULT-LIKE, yes!" about immediate family that I had no space, so I started using "biological parents" about 4 years ago at earliest and regularly about 2 years ago because so many parts of me, on a cellular level, emotionally, my very being was NOT congruent with those ******* imbeciles being my parents!! I was like they can't be! Thus, they're biological parents, and indeed 3 years go 

4) in almost a decade after 16, I've sought tons of mother and father figures. TONs. Mainly fahter figures, but some mothe rfigures too. I didn't realize this was because my family became dysfunctional when I was 16. I was so desperate for not so much affection, but "learnign" a dad to take me out and teach me how to make a fire in the woods and outdoorsy stuff. The most my father ever inquired is "do you want to go out to dinner' I was just anothe client. He took all his clients out to dinner. He liked gay *** ******* retarded restaurants and I deluded myself that going out sitting down and ordering pasta and eating it while waiting for refills on water and the check was actually something FUN. That's all my father ever invited me to do "with him" as "father-son" time. pathetic (actually just recently i've done a few shrink sessions iwth my two parnets, moi, and a shrink, which I suggested almsot a decade ago) and we played a board game, but other than, that pathetic. The way I see, i Never had a dad. My mom was more like a dad (she played more sports and stuff). I never learned from my dad and boy did I ask him. How do I earn? How cna I get a job? I always wanted to see him work. To see my dad at work in action!! 

5) I hate and am self-critical of how I think my dad is a pathetic failure sack of ****. I DISLIKE that I evaluate him that way and I've tried to look at him and genuinely hae looked at him as successful and incredibly smart and he may very well be to some people, but he let me done with the Important things. The stuff that a dad should do with their son, he never did that. (He did do a stock contest once and I'll give him credit it for that, that was slightly didactic, but it was something you'd do with a business, certainly not father-son time). I remember building traps as a kid with my youngest brother. It was incredibly fun, (utilizing a lot of mechanical physics). I loved that stuff. THAT's the type of stuff a dad should've been doing with his son. Anyways, I only look at my dad as a failure as a parent. I dislike that and he has a great bunch of positive qualities (very intelligent, manipulative, good at getting peopel to do what he wants (I, funny enough am good at knowing what others want, that's a demise because that other-person-knowledge often eclipses my own itnerest), making money, My dad is a GENIUS at making money, but he doesnt' teach me how he does that AT ALL and always says something adrift and ridiculing and evasive like "just get a job" , which I have tried. . so conclusively 5 is I evaluate my father as a father as almost a 99% failure. I am highly critical of him and I think I am so, because he was so highly critical of me, but mostimportantly I DISLIKE that I consider my fathe ra failure. I Would have loved to have a dad that I loved who was a hero (and you can imagine with all this father figure seeking -- I have recently in the past year told a person if I thought of them as a fathe rfigure) and taught me valuable lessons. Many successful people seem to have a father figure who "taught them lessons'. I don't have that, and I dislike that.

6)That's a pretty good start. To conclude with this opening. I have these grievances and I read Forgive for Good and I want to absolve those grievances. I don't want to sit down and pow-wow and talk it out with folks becasue I've done that For a LONG time and advocated that and they're just a putrid waste of my time. They've intoxicated my life, my future, and plans on such massivley vile and abusive level, I've considered suing them (but I'd lose because they could afford better laywers). IF you can believe it, as a whallopping bit of insanity icing on this ludicrous hell situation is I'm currently in a situation where I'm "sort of" living with htem. after living either in apartments they paid for or in dorms for most of the time since 16...

okay.

conclusisve synopsis of grievances:
1) they never taught me to earn and sabogatged my earning, I spoiled myself rotten with them being rich and am not as knowledgeable as want to be with earning.

2) residual anger at bioparents want to absolve. 

3) this biological parents "couldn't possibly be my parents' ( I have investigated blood type to see if I was adopted) thing is very open and hellish and I am old enough to be a bloody parent and tha'ts crazy. This has also caused me to "flee" portions of my life and travel sporadically to "find my true family" Although I never really called it that. Sounds like a nice thing to do but it's hell. I don't want to "find my true family" (you end up projecting things onto peopel that don't exist, it's bad times) nor mend my biological one at all. I just want to work on me, preventing me from doing toxic things, and absolving grievances of past.

4) Saught mother and fathe rfigures but never acknowledged nor shared this until recently.

5) I wish I could look at him in another light, but I evaluate my biological father as a disgusting brainwashing , cult-leader failure piece of ****. I WISH I had a dad I looked up to and liked and I learned valuable things from. I could re-evaluate my dad (as I have many times) and only focus on the things he taught (and he did teach some things) tha twere interesting. But I don't see my dad as a hero at all. I see him as a pathetic, frightened lost person who controls people and eanrs a lot of money and emotionally is an infant and lost. I dislike that but would like to absolve that and not be at peace with me dad but moreso be at piece with how I evaluate him (which is crtiically and in a negative light). I htink this one is so big because being critical of a parent was like "blasphemous' in my immediate family and unheard of.

6)relinquish other grievances.

okay then.

Perhaps not an absolutely useful observation.... however, IME, unless there is a great respect for education, strong connection to wisdom culture (through authentic spiritual advisors, people who have gone through the complexity of life and have lived to tell the tale, deep knowledge of overcoming adversity on emotional and identity levels)... wealth... particularly extreme wealth, can be, and very often IS, as emotionally damaging and isolating as extreme poverty, albeit in different ways.

One often finds that the super-rich are trapped in a psychology of truly bizarre immaturity... coupled with gross distortions about who they are and their place in the world and what is "their due" or what they are entitled to.

Many believe that ordinary rules of conduct, or social norms, or common decency or empathy, are little constraints for little people, they are made of much finer stuff and a different set of rules apply to them.

To put it mildly, it makes them hard to communicate with.

I'll tell you a true story here about one of the richest men in the world and how he died.

He had us over for dinner at his compound on the Bahamian island of Eleuthra (the director of the CIA had a vacation place next door, fwiw)..... it was a remarkable place, fitting a man who could afford anything. He didn't like bahamian soil so he has shiploads of the North Carolina topsoil imported (the right acidity for the plants he wanted) so as to create an ecosystem to his liking...

The one problem with the beautiful bahamian beaches that stretched in front of his home was tar. Tankers would flush their tanks with seawater offshore, and the petroleum tar would blob upon the beaches and stick to your feet. A lot of scrubbing with soap was necessary to have reasonably clean feet.

So, fast forward, he's showing me around the house... we're walking through a kitchen that looked like it would be appropriate for a resort hotel, and he shows me a cabinet filled with cases of laboratory chemicals. Being a science kid at university I immediately recognized the manufacturer, Fisher Scientific, and I also immediately recognized the chemical itself..... 1,1,1 trichloroethane, reagent grade.

Mr. Henry Kaiser proudly takes out a liter bottle and exclaims, this is how WE get the beach tar off of OUR feet.

Understood, 1,1,1 trichloroethane is a very powerful solvent. It will take the beach tar right off of your feet like nothing else. Unfortunately, it is also a carcinogen that very efficiently crosses the skin and enters the bloodstream, where it will then attack the liver.

Seems that nobody clarified this point to Mr. Henry Kaiser.

Sucked in a breath and thought I'd have to tell him what was what, regardless of his possible reaction.

"sir, that stuff will give you liver cancer"....

He responds, "nonsense, my engineers tell me this is perfectly safe"

About 7 years later I see his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle... died of liver cancer.

He thought he was so rich, so good, so well advised that nobody could tell him anything that he didn't want to hear. He thought reality bent to his will. That if he didn't want to believe that 1,1,1 trichloroethane would give him liver cancer if he soaked his feet in it, then by God, it wouldn't.

I wonder, to this day, what went through his head when he received his diagnosis. That he might have learned something from a 19 year old kid that could have saved his life ? That other people might know something ? If only he had a sliver of humility and could have listened, maybe asked for more information, gotten out of his egocentric bubble ? Too late for him, sad to say.

Hi bufo.

This is why I like NLP, NLP forums, and NLP people. Frequently anecdotes are offered that (via metaphor and frames) dont' destructively provide advice, but just offer a different perspective.

Thanks for hte anecdote on the potentially destructive nature of wealth, the trichloroethane misjudgment, and the dire consequences acting frivolously with chemicals.

Maybe an illusory and hunhealthy sense of invulnerability can occasionally come in the package of any success (wealth, career, emoitonal etc).

I liked the usage of hte chemical because I'm interested in chemistry very much recently. kk. cheers

Revelations of My Father’s Cowardice
it's reallly big though. I'd like to capture/define how I feel. In the past I've felt "calm" but it was like calm that was jsut on the surface, underneath I knew it was cans of worms nad confusion and anger. I feel like I've spread out all those confusing psychological knots and I see what was up and what caused what. It's not so much balance, but rather just like moving forward in life over something I've tried to forget or deny or was infurated about. Amazing how logically understanding something complex ust understanding that is pretty liberating I would normally say, but it's more like joyful but it's not like "whoop for joy" it's like deep placid joy. weird.

Well that's what makes me slightly agitated/scared/pissed. A part of me is still 16. And another part of me still wishes he was 16 because then I woudlnt have all this self-pressure of I should've accomplisehx x,y,z etc by now. So i wish I would've seen the inter-relationship between all the things I observed 10 years ago so I would've been more at peace with myself so I could've accomplished a lot of the things I wanted to accomplish. I guess I felt many of many of the things I did for awhile were reactions to (often deleterious reactions) what I didn't understand, but now do understand!

Authentic Personal Fears
fear of ppl who have discombobulated science studies
fearful of people who earn
these unlike bio fathe rare not deepseeded psycholgoical issues I failed to address, i’m addressing them and I’m one of hte most psychologically congruent people I know whose put enormous hours and years of time into life to ensure psychological congruency and clarity!

After awhile the only thing you associate with bullies is fear, pain, anger, and/or actions that involve hiding (pr possibly vengeance). All said emotions I experience on a regular basis around my biological parents. I learned to fear them like the animals in a forest fear pillaging and reckless humans whom invade and destroy (with deforestation and the like) the delicate forest.

One of hte most noteworthy deleterious consequences of being in the vicinity of my biological is if they act disruptive I end up feeling angry or “their pain”. For example, one evening my mom storms upstairs and flicks the light on and off at midnight. Clearly something was awry. Loud noises and bangs ensued until my sense of focus had shifted onto them and I wasn’t focused on my self. Then of course the noises stopped. I felt incredibly shaky and used and violated after that experience. It was unexcpeted and alarming. I quickly realized that my parents all the time have purposefully disrupted me.

The relationship with toxic parents wil always be parent-child; it will never be adult-adult. Biological parents will always treat their children as children and never adults, in a sense, never grow up, themselves. They stay locked into a patronizing role to falsely compensate for other areas of inadequacy in their life.

The interesting thing is 1) I definitely want to address and resolve and dismantle any power my biological parents have over me. Additionally, I want to have my parents be neither a problem nor solution. I’ve actively focused on addressing those issues. I will not accept myself if I push those issues under the rug like my cowardly biological father did. That said, I realize now I may have been too full throttle in trying ot resolve those issues. Not addresing issues with your own parents or focusing and fretting about them your entire life are both pretty maladaptive.


Regaining Time
Time. The biggest thing my biological parents stole and ripped away from me was time. Be it removing me from the math class I needed or making me feel unsafe so I led much of my life in a panic instead of scheduling time blocks and using my time. So when I resumed getting my coaching certification and was able to schedule in blocks of time for the classes, I felt incredibly nto so much empwoered, but having a modicum of control that one should have in their life!

Such and enormous amount of my time and life went towards regaining balance and clarity and after feeling “electrocuted with anxiety” upon my biological parents interacting with me. When I finally learned a “Phobia Cure” technique to desensitize myself from my biological parents I started moving forward. That was a genuine update for me.

Most of all, my biological parents have made me feel lost. And feeling lost is one of the most timewasting experiences one can encounter.

The sense of loss and shakiness that arouse from the fear and trauma my biological parents induced negatively effected my body. I couldn’t gain weight. I’d be like crazy because of anxiety all the time. It was physiologically and emotionally a very troubling time indeed.

I think one of the most toxic things that my parents did to me was cause me to think that their mind-frame perception of me (how they perceieved me) was how I really was. I wasn’t allowed to witness the innacuracy of their mind-frame of me. I remember when I had been away from them and they returned I felt this overwhelming sense of fear, inadequacy and a shakiness. Only later did I realize that the shakiness was my body not liking this frame I was trying to put on myself. The frame I was trying to fit onto me (like a square peg in a round hole) was my parents’ tacit evaluation of me (loser, bum, broken person). I realized I’d be happy, joyfully connected with mates or feeling pretty stable and then the presence of my parents would severely mutilate my sense of clarity.

It took me awhile but I eventually learned (and am unquestionably still learning) that a frame someone has of you is rarely the frame you hold of yourself and is rarely accurate. Sometimes the frame puts you in an inflated light or, in the case of my biological parents, it put me in a “broken” light.

The Consequences of an Brutally Icy & Villifyingly Toxic Mother
I realized at 26 that my father’s bullying could have been “learned” from my mother’s monstrosity of complaints, bullying, ridicule and complaints and criticism. Massive, massive criticism. My mother criticized how I left the kitchen in a pig sty even though I scrubbed it and cleaned it regularly. My mother criticized how I noisy I was when I focused on being incredibly quiet and was. My mother restricted where I could go and what I could do and in which bed I could sleep in the house. Their are prisons that produced a lesser sense of inadequacy and have more freedom. My mother would insult you in a way so that you felt like it was your fault and your wrong and your own (false) inadequacy that had upset her. Be it her accusations of not being clean or keeping her awake, my mom, being very intelligent (but moreso malicious), had a way of spinning words to make you feel guilty for a barrage of problems that you never caused.

I didn’t logically understand this; I didn’t see the dismal consequence of interacting with my toxic mother. I was blind (because of her effectively self-concealing manipulations). But when I was awakened to how heinously brutal and villifying my mother was and still is (and unfortunately) will be, it became clear. When I burst into tears after studying a computer science book the summer of 6th grade complaining to my mother that I “didn’t learn anything”. It was more like I had connected with something I like (the logic and science of the computer) and found that logic a healthy retreat from the abuses of my biological mother, so my mother’s villifications felt all the more painful. All the times I shared my 97% test scores or A- grades wtih my mom I remember time and time again complaining that she wasn’t listening and I even remember attempting the ridiculous practice of “telling my mom wha to say” like “great!”. I knew her words were hollow and meaningless. Kind of like how something normally painful feels increasedly painful juxtaposed to something pleasurable.. I merely felt a sense of defeat, a greater sense of lost, and upset after interacting with my mom. But because she usually tricked me into pleading for her forgiveness for her own suffering that I had no effect in causing (but was harshly accused of causing). It was only after doing a series of coaching classes and connecting with coaches and I’ve done an enormous amount of coaching so I felt a strong resonation with coaching. I reached this understanding because I had been interacting with such uplifting and validating people (but I never fully trust any person with good measure and logic and intention) so this tyrannical, villifying, and abuse tirade seemed so pronounced and deeply brutal to the point of almost being evil.

I noticed the similarity between the style of bullying my mother delivered and had always delivered (but I hadn’t been clear enough to understand it in the past) and how it practically belittled my father’s bullying in comparison. I then realized it was my mom whom had enslaved my biological father. My father was my mother’s minion. It was logical that my father’s bullying was learned from and mimcry of my mother’s bullying and harsh chidings.

Then in this same episode my mother continued to chide me about being awakened, about not getting sleep before her speech, about leaving the kitchen a mess, and numerous other number of accusations.

My only relief is by not buying any of he victimizations she will lose interest in bullying. One tactic I’ve noticed they do (and it’s a form of ridicule) is to exaggerate any suggestion. If I, for example, mention to go to sleep earlier than she’d say that maybe I should go to sleep in the morning, thus any suggestion becomes ridiculed. It’s a very deceitful and harmful tactic because it’s so hard to spot that you’re being villified but then you leave thinking your own ideas and suggestions are silly, which is not the case, your ideas are intelligent. The long-term consequence of the tacitly “ridicule” method is that one loses trust in themselves because their suggestions are so frequently indirectly put down or cast aside as irrelevant.

The second biggest realization that I discovered was how peculiar idiosyncracies I had, my mother also had. My mother said that she didn’t like people close by and that that invaded her sense of privacy to the extent that she couldn’t experience happiness nor joy. Surprisingly, I felt the exact same way. I felt as though my happiness and joy increased massively in solitude which I had experience before them being around. I felt most free doing solo camping or when no one else was home and I knew no one else would be around. I also realized that my mom crept around to be quiet just as I did. Distressingly, there were some similarities there.

Here’s my analysis of my mohter. I think my mother constantly focuses on other people. If I present a problem (like needing a new chair because of a back problem), my mother seems unable to move on until it is solved or a solution is in the works. That’s a great quality for a leader who resolves things with and/or for people. But as a son, living with a mom who needs to solve everything, you learn not to present problems after awhile. I think my mom looks to solve other’s problems first before her own. Those are nice qualities but it in no way vindicates her from the heinously cutting and deeply disturbing assaults of criticism she released upon myself and my brothers. As my parents marriage became more and more crippled I think my mom’s “sensitivity to being around other people” increaased, as did the severity of her criticisms because her acetic and strained emotional situation with her husband (my biological father) caused her to become more and more waspish.

I enjoy my sleep hours but I don’t share them. Currently it’s roughly 4pm to midnight. A good solid 8 hours and more importantly multiple horus before even the earliest appointments of the day. Those sleep hours truly provide me with the most joy.

I think my dad wanted me to get along with my mother so much that I tried to forget how wounded, emotionally stabbed, and brutalized I had felt after interacting with her. I tried to run that destructive feeling off and neglect it. That did me an incredibe amount of harm. I could scrutinize my mom and how deeply unhappy she was in life and use that to try to generate leverage to pity her situation and then therefore feel as though it wasn’t her to blame. And maybe it’s not entirely her to blame, but he conduct was heinous and unforgiveable and I know a lot of hte inadequacy and self-dbout and depression I experienced in youth and whenever I was around my mother was the result of her simply being a highly toxic person. There was no way to ever feel redeemed or honored after interacting with that person. And then I trained to feel guilty about not getting along with my biological mother.

They thrive and enjoy it when I’m in an uncomfortable spot. I now see why my mother isn’t successful despite her intelligence and credentials: she’s a horrendous person to work with. Villifying, insensitive in the wrong areas, over-sensitive in the wrong areas, and degrading and patronizing. She made you feel guilty and uncomfortable about feeling upset or aggravated by what she said. This would be like someone shooting you in the leg and then tricking you into feeling embarassed or ashamed of it hurting. It actually is frigthfully similar to that. I instantly thought of this scene from one of my favoriate moves as a kid “The Land of Far Away” where this mom is wretched to this boy, screaming, insulting, accusing, and then the boy discovers this magical land (*cough* of far away) after running away from with whom I was living. I see now why, at age 8 or 9 I loved that movie so. It was because that abusive mother and the lost abused protoganist was me. It perfectly exemplified my life.

I felt very empowered and like a professional coach. LIke a professional. A true man. And then 10 minutes of heinously upsetting conversation with my mother, I feel wounded, lost, helpless, and incompetent when before I felt massively competent and confident. My mom’s manipulations quickly destabilized my confidence and competence. It was a massively destructive experience interacting with her.

This sounds just like an awful lot of "perfectly normal" corporate environments... especially in the financial businesses.... you might (or might not) be amazed to discover that such behavior is notoriously standard at the upper levels of many organizations, both from male and female senior executives.... .... you appear to be describing the corporatification of the home environment... where everything is reduced to topdog-underdog power games... many a well intended executive has had his or her physical health ruined and mental health permanently scarred... not to mention the second order effects on their family structures.... normal in a very abnormal way...

Some business scholars who have combined the study of personality psychology and organizational dynamics have observed a cluster of personality disorders that one finds in the high-achieving, high-demand, high-control styles of the "racehorce" executive. These disorders would be well worth learning about in order to better understand and orient to any power based environment:

A. Obsessive-Compulsive disorder.... many high achievers also have elevated OCD characteristics ..... control freaky, micro managing, unregulated hammering on about seemingly minor details... being absolutely obsessed with ludicrous degrees of perfection and often feeling extreme anxiety about a single spot or uncrossed T....

B. Narcissistic Personality Disorder.... the idea that one's ego is the center of the known universe and everything revolves around it, the need to diminish or defeat any other competitive personality, the constant need for attention and adulation...

C. an unfortunately, in many of today's executives, Antisocial Personality Disorder, a.k.a. the Sociopathic personality.... complete disregard for others, no sense of boundaries, the deep gut sense of being royally entitled to whatever one can grab, being incensed or infuriated with any form of confrontation over one's behavior, values, or effects on others, a delight in the suffering of others, emotionally superficial and charming, yet becomes furious when rebuffed, an innate sense that others are dupes or fools who are easily deceived and deserve to be deceived, and almost completely absent inner life...

D. Passive-Aggressive personality disorder.... very, very common in highly structured organizations where one understands that one must "play the game" to succeed, true feelings, especially those of aggression, are deeply concealed and disguised, and most pathologically, often repackaged as "for your own good"...

The film classic Mommy Dearest is a fine exploration of this cluster of personality traits... although hardly a comprehensive explication of every way in which they can manifest...

Order some basic reading in personality psychology from Amazon... you will find specific works addressing each disorder... you might also benefit from studying the psychology of Sadism and Masochism.... it sounds like you are being "set up" to play an intensely scripted masochistic life role.... you may need the help of therapists across several specialties to gain a fuller understanding of how your particular family dynamics are shaping your personality and ultimately your fate.

hi Verne,

In many ways your situation seems unique. Lots of intense feeling - anchoring in these very potent stories in your body - and in your consciousness. In other ways, your story is everyone's story. Golden child, full-of-light, born to parents who are screwed up, don't "get it"- resulting in abuse and neglect. They fail to see the gift that the child represents, because they would have to grow, heal, and change - in order to BE the parent and guardian (in a true sense of the word).

The question is:

Can you see that they may be in the same boat as you?
Shipwrecked themselves, having grown up without the proper guidance and nurturing?
How can they give you what they don't possess themselves?

So without getting into any kind of counseling-through-the-forum (which is somewhat impossible) I can simply say that it's the old generational dance. It's not a question of whether or not your parents have issues - they do. The real question is how many generations will these issues pass down from parent-to-child before someone stands up and says "the buck stops here. I will find a way to heal."

A few hints:

Iron John
Unholy hungers
Radical forgiveness
Winning Through Enlightenment

Blessings,
David